The development of letter representations in preschool children is affected by visuomotor integration skills and visual field asymmetries

Abstract

One essential skill believed to consolidate during the preschool years is children’s ability to recognize the different letters of the alphabet. The aim of the present study was to track how visual representations of letters change and are consolidated with exposure to print and the graphomotor experience a child has. A secondary goal of this study was to investigate the emergence of the right visual field advantage for letter identification, reflecting children’s sensitivity to the directionality of print. Eighty-one preschool children (aged 4 to 5 years) participated in a longitudinal study where they were shown isolated uppercase letters in both normal upright format and rotated 180°. The letter stimuli were mixed randomly with symbol stimuli in a letter/non-letter lateralized classification task. The results indicated that accuracy in classifying rotated letters as letters—rather than symbols—significantly improved among 4-year-old preschoolers between testing in December (mid-year) and in June (end of the school year). In contrast, little further development was observed in 5-year-old preschoolers, although they still exhibited a slight disadvantage in accuracy when classifying rotated letters. Additionally, behavioral and eye-movement data highlighted a left-to-right deployment of attention by the end of the second year of formal preschool education, evidenced by the emergence of a right visual field advantage. Our results suggest that letter representations undergo significant consolidation during the second year of formal preschool education, which typically corresponds to 4-year-old children in France, with a close relationship between letter identification skills, sensitivity to the directionality of print, and visuo-motor integration skills.